


Memory

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, focused on Emma, relationship implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 01:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: SQ prompt: Coming outRequested by anon





	Memory

****

She feels the tongue heavy on her mouth, the way the words brim on her lips, her heart thundering as she thinks how the moment must be that one, the second before, the second after. She can taste her nervousness on the way she keeps on trying to swallow, her throat dry and protesting as she hums, trying to avert her eyes from them.

She remembers the way words, those same words, had been directed at her for a really long time. An insult, a threat. She remembers how those words had taken again and again from her. No one, someone had said her once, should weigh her own actions so carefully, with such fear. She remembers how she had scoffed, thinking of herself as broken and weak. Her future bleak as she had been taken from yet another home, names and faces starting to blur together.

She remembers the way the sadness had been replaced by anger, by fear of herself, by rebellion and pain low on her stomach, biting into her flesh every time she let herself slip; look, smile at, dream of. She remembers the way she had cried, the way she had, slowly, started to build walls around her. Around the fear of not being enough.

She remembers thinking she was safe; falling yet again on that same pit, weighed down by the expectations of those she had learnt they were family. She remembers the panic, the sleepless nights, words coming back on her mind, swirling inside of her. At first colorless, sharp, then hard and bringing with them the trace of a magic, a power, that wasn’t hers -couldn’t be hers-. And yet it was.

She remembers trying to suppress the feelings, the fear. She remembers slipping, time and again; the façade of self-assuredness crackling, the persona she had constructed for herself crumbling at her feet.

She had always tried to please. That’s how one fits, that’s how one finds what they are searching for, right?

On the system it looked that way and despite her rebellious side, despite the tattoo on her wrist, the name it brought with it, the memories it had on each dot of ink, thousands of other moments were written as well on the way she let anger fuel her magic, her power, as her soul was taken away from her, dagger on her hand and just one person on her mind.

She had let herself slip many, numerous times and each time she had done it there had been some price to pay.

She remembers the wishes, the whispers on the back of her mind, the way the words kept hitting her teeth so strongly she feared they would break them, shatter them, along with the lies she had tried to turn into truths. Of a commodity turned into love. Of force turned into devotion.

She remembers how those hadn’t worked either, taking and taking away from her, turning her into something, someone, who wasn’t hers.

The question, however, was who was she then and, as she rose her face and stared at her parents, she thought on the scraps of herself she had managed to start putting together. On gentle brown eyes with just a hint of purple staring at her; waiting, pushing her to be better.

“I have something to tell you.”

These are the words that leave her breathless. The words that sets everything in motion, that makes it impossible for her to backtrack, to feign that she isn’t trying to say something.

“I’m bi.”

Those are the words that make her swallow.

Later, she will say that it wasn’t for her, for Regina. It’s not. Not like others will say it is.

She, however, cannot keep waiting for words to break free from inside her lungs, cutting their way through as horrible, twisted creatures that will destroy her. She, as Regina, wants another story. Not and ending. Another path, a different one.

One that’s hers and hers alone.

Alongside with her.


End file.
